Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as network marketing or pyramid selling, is a marketing strategy for the sale of products or services in which the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling the companys products/services, while the earnings of the participants are derived from a pyramid-shaped or binary compensation commission system. MLM companies encourage existing members to promote and sell their offerings to other individuals and bring on new recruits into the business. Participants are paid a percentage of their recruits sales, and members at all levels receive some form of commission, which means the more layers there are, the more money people can earn. MLM is a legitimate business strategy used by some direct sales companies to sell products and services. However, MLM has been criticized for being a pyramid scheme, which is illegal. In a pyramid scheme, the reward for recruiting new distributors is more than it is for selling products to the public.